Jury finds Samsung guilty of infringing on Apple's patents

It took the jury three days of deliberations, before they reached a unanimous verdict in the Apple vs. Samsung trial. While Samsung were probably not too happy with the verdict, Apple must be rejoicing, the jury found that Samsung had willfully infringed on both Apple patents and trade dress for the iPhone, however when it comes to the tablets they ruled in favor of Samsung. Finally the jury found that Samsung must pay Apple $1.05 billion in damages for willfully infringing on Apple’s intellectual property.

Samsung was found guilty of willfully infringing on Apple’s patent relating to:

• The jury was asked to fill out a form covering 33 separate questions regarding patents, trade dress, and antitrust.
• On the first claim, regarding the ‘381 “bounce back” patent, the jury finds Samsung guilty on all counts. Samsung infringed on Apple’s patent on a wide variety of products.
• On Apple’s “pinch and zoom” ‘915 patent, the jury found that Samsung infringed on all but three products.
• For the “double-tap to zoom” ‘163 patent, the jury found that Samsung infringed on a wide number of products, but not all.
• The jury found that Samsung took actions that it knew or should have known were infringing across the ‘381, ‘915, and ‘163 patents on most, though not on all, counts.
• For the ‘677 patent, covering Apple’s trade dress registration of the look of the front of the iPhone, the jury found that Samsung did infringe on most devices, but again, not all.
• For the D’087 patent, covering Apple’s trade dress registration of the look of the back of the iPhone, the jury found that Samsung did infringe on some devices, but not all.
• For the ‘305 patent, covering the trade dress registration of the iPhone’s home screen, the jury found that Samsung infringed across most devices.
• For the D’889 patent, covering the trade dress registration of the iPad’s appearance, the jury found that Samsung’s tablets do not infringe — one of the first victories for Samsung.
• On the question of whether Samsung Korea knew or should have known it was inducing US subsidiaries to infringe on the D’677, D’087, D’305 and/or D’889 patents, the jury found in favor of Apple across a wide number of phones and patents, though not on the ‘889 patent regarding the iPad. These two questions are significant for Apple to receive damages.
• On the question of whether Samsung’s infringement was willful, the jury again found for Apple on a number of patents and devices.
• Finally, the jury ruled that all of Apple’s patents are valid.

Not long after the verdict was reached, Apple CEO, Tim Cook, sent a memo to all employees, the Memo is below:

Today was an important day for Apple and for innovators everywhere.

Many of you have been closely following the trial against Samsung in San Jose for the past few weeks. We chose legal action very reluctantly and only after repeatedly asking Samsung to stop copying our work. For us this lawsuit has always been about something much more important than patents or money. It’s about values. We value originality and innovation and pour our lives into making the best products on earth. And we do this to delight our customers, not for competitors to flagrantly copy.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the jury who invested their time in listening to our story. We were thrilled to finally have the opportunity to tell it. The mountain of evidence presented during the trial showed that Samsung’s copying went far deeper than we knew.

The jury has now spoken. We applaud them for finding Samsung’s behavior willful and for sending a loud and clear message that stealing isn’t right.

I am very proud of the work that each of you do.

Today, values have won and I hope the whole world listens.

Tim